My Expertise
Modern and contemporary Chinese literature, film, and culture
Biography
Keru Cai is Lecturer of Chinese Studies in the School of Humanities and Languages at UNSW. She earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds Master's degrees from Harvard University (Regional Studies: East Asia), where she was fully funded by the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, and University of Oxford (English Literature), where she held a Michael von Clemm Fellowship at...view more
Keru Cai is Lecturer of Chinese Studies in the School of Humanities and Languages at UNSW. She earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She also holds Master's degrees from Harvard University (Regional Studies: East Asia), where she was fully funded by the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, and University of Oxford (English Literature), where she held a Michael von Clemm Fellowship at Corpus Christi College. Her Bachelor's degree was awarded by Harvard's English Department (Summa Cum Laude, with highest departmental honours).
Dr. Cai's research and teaching encompass modern and contemporary Chinese literature, film, and culture. She is the author of Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism: From Russia, with Squalor (Oxford University Press, 2025), winner of the Columbia University Weatherhead East Asia Institute First Book Award. She has published widely in Chinese and comparative literary studies. Her next book project will put Xiao Hong's literary depictions of childbirth in conversations with health humanities. Current article projects include tracing the Russian superfluous man's afterlife as a Chinese superfluous woman, and examining Bi Gan's engagement with Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker in the film Kaili Blues.
Prior to joining UNSW, Dr. Cai was Lecturer at the University of St Andrews and Assistant Professor at the Pennsylvania State University; she also held a Fellowship by Examination at University of Oxford (Magdalen College).
My Grants
Fellowship by Examination, University of Oxford (Magdalen College), 2020-2022
Columbia University Weatherhead East Asia Institute’s Mervyn W. Adams Seldon First Book Award, including subvention prize, 2024
Conference Grant from Magdalen College, University of Oxford, 2021-2
UC Berkeley Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2019-20
Phi Beta Kappa Graduate Fellowship (extramural), 2019-20
Long-Ling Hsiao Chu Fellowship, Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies, 2019
Simpson Memorial Research Fellowship, Berkeley Institute of International Studies, 2018
UC Berkeley Koshland Course Development Grant, 2017 and 2018
UC Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies Summer Fellowship, 2017
UC Berkeley Townsend Center Conference Travel Grant, 2017, 2019
UC Berkeley Department of Comparative Literature Conference Travel Grant, 2017, 2018
UC Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies Ad Hoc Travel Grant, 2017, 2018
UC Berkeley Department of Comparative Literature Summer Research Grant, 2017
Taiwanese Ministry of Education Huayu Enrichment Scholarship for language study, 2016
UC Berkeley Department of Comparative Literature Summer Language Study Grant, 2016
UC Berkeley Ira Abraham Fellowship, 2015
Mellon-Chancellors Fellowship for Graduate Study at UC Berkeley, 2014-9
UC Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies Top-up Grant, 2014
Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for Graduate Study at Harvard, 2012-14
FLAS Summer Fellowship for Russian Study at Middlebury Language Schools, 2015
FLAS Summer Fellowship for Russian Study at Bard Smolny Program, 2014
FLAS Summer Fellowship for Russian Study at Harvard Summer School, 2013
Michael Von Clemm Fellowship for Graduate Study at Oxford, 2011-12
Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, 2009-11
My Qualifications
PhD in Comparative Literature: University of California, Berkeley (2020)
MA in Regional Studies: East Asia: Harvard University (2014)
MSt in English Literature: University of Oxford (2012)
BA in English: Harvard University (2011)
My Awards
Columbia University Weatherhead East Asia Institute’s Mervyn W. Adams Seldon First Book Award (2024)
European Association of Chinese Studies Young Scholars Award, Second Place (2022)
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award (awarded to fewer than 10% of instructors) (2019)
Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize for outstanding senior thesis at Harvard (2011)
Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society (2010)
John Harvard Scholar (top 5% of class) (2009-11)
My Research Activities
From Russia, with Squalor: Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism (book)
Oxford University Press (May 2025)
Winner of Columbia University Weatherhead East Asia Institute’s Mervyn W. Adams Seldon First Book Award
“Lu Xun’s Russian Intertexts and the Dialectics of Optimism and Pessimism” (book chapter)
In Lu Xun and World Literature, ed. Carlos Rojas and Xiaolu Ma (HKUP, 2025)
“Lu Xun’s Heteromodal Realism”
In Modern Language Quarterly (Sept. 2024): p. 253-278
“The Spatiality of Poverty in Modern Chinese Realism”
In Comparative Literature (Sept. 2023): p. 327-347
“Maxim Gorky in China: 1920s Commentary and Shen Congwen’s ‘Three Men and One Woman’”
In CLEAR: Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles, and Reviews (Dec. 2022): p. 175-191
“The Proximity Effect: Agency and Isolation in Eileen Chang’s ‘Love in a Fallen City’”
In Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies Vol. 48 No. 1 (Mar. 2022): p. 59-84
“Looking, Reading, and Intertextuality in Ding Ling’s “Miss Sophia’s Diary”
In Prism: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature Vol. 17 No. 2 (Oct. 2020): p. 298-325
“The Temporality of Poverty and Realism in Lao She’s Camel Xiangzi”
In Modern Chinese Literature and Culture Vol. 32 No. 1 (Spring 2020): p. 1-36
My Research Supervision
Areas of supervision
Modern and contemporary Chinese literature and culture